Notes from homeschooling Mark

There's a family in my neighborhood that has five children that are mostly home schooled.  I am jealous of this family.  Every time I see some of the children outside during the day, hair disheveled, wearing mismatched clothing, I feel jealous.

(Disheveled hair and mismatched clothing is the birthright of home schooled children everywhere.)

I wonder at such times why my rotten children had to grow up and go to school.

It's possible I have abandonment issues.

But I still have Mark.  And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a lot.

Mark knows where the superglue is now so he decided to repair one of his broken Christmas tree ornaments.  While untwisting the lid, he accidentally squeezed the tube.  He got glue all over his fingers.  He glued some of them together (despite my earlier warnings)!  Under soap and water I was able to get them apart.  He still had glue on his fingers. A lot of glue. 

He got tweezers and had a marvelous time picking glue away.  I told him to just leave it and it would eventually go away.  Mark loves getting tweezers and picking at things though.  (I do too--we are wannabe dermatologists.)

Later, Mark needed to write a business letter for school.  I told him he could make up a query and write it to any company he wanted, real or imagined.

Here's what he came up with:

We are waiting to hear back from Donny.  I have a feeling it will be valuable information for the future.

Mark loves to make up jokes.  They almost always involve an explosion.  Sometimes they're funny though.  The other day at lunch he asked me, "Do you know why Swiss cheese has holes in it?"

"No, why?"

"Because the cheddar is so sharp."

At the time he was eating an original quesadilla of his own creation.  It had several kinds of cheese, roast beef and ham on it.

Mark is one of those people that likes to restate what they've learned.  Braeden's kind of the same way.  I think, "Yeah, I just told you that..." but then I remember they like to restate. 

In science we learned that when you listen to a seashell and you hear "the ocean" you are really hearing the whoosh of your blood reflected back at you.

(As an aside, I refuse to believe that.  I am like Braeden in that way.  According to his teacher, he announced in physics class that he doesn't believe in science.  Me neither.  The ocean sound is in seashells.  Don't dash my dreams, science.)

Mark restated what he'd read but with his own spin.  He said, "The human satellite dishes, or some little things we like to call 'ears'..."

I am glad Mark's around to spice up my days with his unique Markness.  Sometimes I feel a little apprehensive about what his Markness does to the rest of the world.  Is the world ready for a Mark?

He told me his scout leader is going to Brazil for a few months for work.  (I already knew, the whole primary president thing...)  What I didn't know is that apparently, if he doesn't make it out alive, Mark and his friend Fletcher are going to go to Brazil to avenge their leader's death.  Also, in the event that occurs, Mark gets his leader's cell phone and Fletcher gets the laptop.

Glad that's all decided...